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Rent-a-fraudster business operator sentenced to nearly three years in prison

Dmitry Naskovets, who ran CallService.biz, was sent away for fraud and credit card fraud

A man who ran a rent-an-accomplice business for crooks has been sentenced to 33 months in New York prison.

Dmitry Naskovets, who is from Belarus, is the creator of CallService.biz, an online company that helped more than 2,000 identity thieves commit more than 5,000 acts of fraud, according to a statement from the United States Attorney's Office. He was sentenced for conspiring to commit wire fraud and credit card fraud.

"Through his website, Dimitry Naskovets served as the middleman for a network of identity thieves who used his many employees to impersonate thousands of victims in exchange for a stake in the profits from the fraudulent transactions they helped facilitate," said Attorney Preet Bharara in a statement. "This case is another example of how cybercrime knows no geographic boundaries and of how we will work with our partners in the United States and around the world to catch and punish cyber criminals."

The site, which launched in Lithuania in 2007, connected English- and German-speaking people with thieves to thwart bank security screening measures.

There was a market for this because at some institutions some transactions, including initiating wire transfers, require an actual account holder to authorize the transaction by phone. Thieves would provide the account information along with biological information, which included anything banks may ask, to the online service along with instructions on what they needed. CallService.biz would then find someone who matched the victim's gender and was proficient in the language. That person would then authorize the fraudulent transaction by calling the bank.

Naskovets was arrested in the Czech Republic in April 2010 and extradited to the U.S. He pleaded guilty in Febrary 2011.

On ads posted on other websites used by identity thieves, the company boasted to have more than 2090 people working with them.